Whatever happened in Budapest?
by JoMiSm
Summary: We find out what the infamous Budapest mission was. What was the mission? It involves the Red Room... And that is never good. Clintasha.
1. Chapter 1

_**I know, I don't need to start a new story, blah blah SHADDAP! **_

_**Disclaimer: ...I own the world. You are just living in it. COME ON, PEOPLE, I DON'T OWN ANYTHING!**_

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"Barton, Romanoff." said Fury, the comm link lapsing back into silence.

"I copy." they responded simultaneously from their respective positions, despite having been told numerous times that it was _annoying _when they did that and they should _stop it! _

_"_Report to my office for a debriefing." He said. Putting it simply, he left much to be desired information-wise.

Agent Natasha Romanoff and Agent Clint Barton, partners for a little over a year and a half, exchanged a look. Another mission already? They'd only just gotten back from one! But you don't argue with Fury unless its absolutely necessary, or unless you're Tony Stark. But the time of Stark was far in the future, and Fury stood, unchallenged, on most fronts.

They met up together, walking through the hallways, the usual gossipy whisper following them. The Juniors and their gossipy rumors would only ever be just that-a rumor. They were partners. _Partners_. They could not be compromised; compromised meant death.

Barton wearily knocked on the door. When I say 'just got back from a mission' I literally mean 'just got back.' Neither of them would admit it, but they were tired. They needed sleep.

Fury gruffly called them in. "Yes, sir?" asked Natasha, no trace of fatigue anywhere on her. Her poker face and impeccable posture gave nothing to anyone just meeting her, but to Barton and Fury, it was a dead giveaway that she really needed a rest.

"There's been suspected activity at an abandoned enemy base. You are on surveillance." he said.

The two assassins blinked. Surveillance? But they were the top team! Why would Fury put them on such an easy assignment?

Fury had his reasons, to be revealed later. Just know that he had their well being in mind.

"When's liftoff?" Asked Barton, his poker face not as good as Natasha's, but still far better than yours and mine.

"You've got two hours." said Fury, tossing some files at them. Natasha picked them up off the desk. "Dismissed."

Natasha and Clint left, arriving at their quarters quickly. Natasha flipped open the file immediately, avoiding Clint's searching gaze. "Budapest," she began. "The outskirts of town...it doesn't say _who_ we're observing." That's odd. Natasha's perfect poker face slipped, the fatigue getting to her. Clint took the files from her.

"Go get some rest or something." he said, looking at his files. "I'll debrief you on the plane."

Natasha hesitated, really wanting to protest but also really wanting a shower and a nap. Finally, she walked to the door, pausing for a moment before murmuring "Thank you." quietly enough that Clint wondered if she'd said anything at all. A moment later, Natasha disappeared.

"You're welcome, Tasha." He said, sighing to the empty room.

* * *

"I know it's risky, but I'm not just going to let them sit there like ducks on a pond!" growled Fury.

"Director Fury, that is not your decision to make." said one of the council members. Does it matter who? They're all hypocrites who say the same thing to a ticked off director Fury.

"I will not let the Red Room get my best agents." said Fury, turning off their screens with the satisfying push of a button. He stalked away, ignoring all the rules he'd just broken, because FTW, he was going to save them.

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_**:) You likey? You likey? I need reviews. Please. I will love you forever. **_

_**-JoMiSm**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Sorry, it's been a while. It's summer now, though, so MORE FREQUENT UPDATES! HURRAY! *waving arms***_

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Natasha was rudely startled back to the land of the living from another horrifying nightmare, which no one, not even Clint, knew about. It was a secret well hidden behind the stone walls and unbreakable masks. No matter how much progress Clint thought he'd made in deciphering the puzzle of his partner, there was more. There was always more.

The thing which had awoken the ginger was Coulson knocking on her bedroom door. "Romanoff, five 'till liftoff." He reminded her dutifully. Natasha stood without a reply. A moment later, she walked out the door with a quick nod to Coulson.

She arrived exactly on time, stepping onto the plane. Clint was already there, and he acknowledged Natasha with a small half smile and a nod as he talked with the pilot.

Not too long later, he sat beside her. "How'd you sleep?" He asked conversationally.

"What's the intel?" asked Natasha deliberately, accompanying her words with a small sigh.

Clint gave her a look, but said "We should arrive in about eight hours. The base used to be some unknown terrorist, but was eliminated... This seems like a distraction mission."

Natasha pondered this for a moment. "Give me the file-you go get some rest."

"No, you didn't sleep well-"

"Barton, you didn't sleep at _all. _Go. Now." she said, unceremoniously snatching the file from him and scanning it.

It was a small plane, with one large room separated from the cockpit by a little door. Clint stretched out on the little bench/couch thing opposite Natasha. In just a few minutes, he was asleep.

Natasha silently scanned the file over and over, never finding any new information. It was the vaguest intel they'd ever been given! That hour and a half of sleep was all Natasha had gotten in two weeks, not counting a handful of five-minute naps every once in a while. Before she knew it, she was drifting slowly off into sleep...

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_**It's short, but better than nothing, right? Anyway, more frequent updates... HIP HIP HOORAY! HIP HIP HOORAY! HIP HIP... **_

_**(Waiting for the hooray...)**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**In two weeks, I'm going to be gone for five days. Sorry! I will try to update as many times as I possibly can before then. **_

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Clint woke up, not sure what'd awoken him, and glanced habitually over at his partner. Natasha had shifted uncomfortably, waking Clint, and as he glanced at her, her face contorted in...pain?

"Natasha?" he asked quietly. Instantaneously, a gun was pointed directly at Clint, Natasha's eyes wide with fear. This lasted for only half a second, however. In another moment, Natasha registered where she was and at whom she was pointing her gun at. She sat down, her metaphorical walls slamming up.

"Natasha?" He asked again, softly.

"What, Barton?" she replied, averting her eyes to the files. Last name basis-something was wrong.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

Natasha snapped the files closed decidedly. "I'm fine."

Clint respected her privacy and backed off, but he wondered... She had to have had a nightmare; she doesn't simply get startled, at least, not that easily. So...was it about her past? The Red Room?

"It does seem like a distraction mission." she said, interrupting his thoughts.

"Why would Fury be distracting us?" asked Clint, knowing she was changing the subject on purpose.

"The last time, it was when some idiot tried to track you down and eliminate you." said Natasha. SHIELD had averted their attention, and, shall we say, 'dealt with' the assassin? Natasha hadn't spoken to Fury for a month; if someone threatens _her_ partner, _she_ wants to take out the threat. _  
_

"You don't think-?" said Clint, immediately jumping to the same conclusion she had.

"It's almost certainly a Room assassin trying to track me down right now." confirmed Natasha.

The room filled with silence, suffocating both of them. The Room never failed its missions; Natasha, the only exception, was being eliminated because of it.

* * *

After a lot of bickering, Barton forced Romanoff to take the couch and he took the chair. Then, Clint got a crick in his neck, giving up and taking the floor, completely ignoring Natasha's protests. They both actually fell asleep, Clint welcoming it and Natasha protesting all the way. Resistance is futile.

About an hour until landing, Natasha woke. Gently stepping over Clint, as to not wake him, she went into the restroom and came back in her Black Widow outfit, ready to roll.

In reality, she sat there for forty-three more minutes, drumming her fingers softly against the armrest, and then waking Clint. Well... Actually...

Natasha slapped Clint.

"Good God, woman!" he yelped, clutching the offended shoulder.

"Quit being such a baby. It could've been worse; I could've punched you." she responded coolly. Clint completely missed her change of clothes, not even noticing the ponytail instead of her hairstyle she'd had before he went to bed. Yeah, Clint, for a spy, is pretty nonobservant.

"What was that for?" He moaned dramatically, looking up at her from the ground.

"What'd you expect, a kiss on the cheek?" Not giving him a chance to answer, she added: "About thirteen minutes till touchdown." When he still looked blank, she gestured to her attire.

"Oh." He said, grabbing his bag. A good twelve-and-a-half minutes later, Clint came out of the bathroom. The 'and-a-half' part was putting on the suit, and the other twelve minutes were spent styling his hair. To Natasha, it looked exactly as it had before: Like he'd just jumped out of bed. Clint called it 'disheveled.'

"Took you long enough." she muttered. The plane touched the ground.

"Sorry-can't rush perfection." he said with a cheeky grin.

"You're asking for another slap." Clint stepped away from the annoyed ginger. Satisfied, Natasha stepped off the plane.

Snow drifted lazily through the air, meandering to the final destination of Budapest. It was freezing-Natasha and Clint exchanged a look.

Five minutes later, they stepped back into the snowy landscape, their usual black outfits exchanged for white, Natasha leaving on her black belt with a red hourglass. Her red hair stood out drastically against the silvers and whites of the surroundings. Clint had a white jacket, flexible and burn, water, and tear proof, not that you could tell by the appearance, and his same black bulletproof vest was under it. The colour of the stormy skies perfectly matched his eyes.

They marched off of the plane. Well, not really 'marched.' Natasha jumped gracefully to the ground, ignoring the walkway. Clint meandered down said walkway, taking in the surroundings. Annoyed by the pure whiteness and blinding snow, he pulled on his shades, hitting a microscopic hidden button on them. He instantly saw Natasha's heat signature, but no one else's. They were alone. They were on a mission.

They were ready.

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_**Look at the top A/N, if you missed it! **_

_**Review!**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**If you like this story, you might like The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, another of my stories. =D Black Thorn-Thanks for ALLLL of your reviews on all of my stories! She is a guest, guys, I had to reply somewhere. Don't get jealous. Oy jamoy, I got off track, sorry. :D **_

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One of the Red Room trainees stood at attention before Ivan Petrovich's desk. Her name is not important; she is not vital to our story. She struggled not to flip her shoulder-length blonde curls over her shoulder as she stood rigidly, Ivan not acknowledging her existence. She remained respectfully at attention.

Three minutes...

Five minutes...

Suddenly, "Speak, Ivanova." came from her trainer's lips.

"Sir," she said, before anything else. "Target 01 appears to be on the move." Her eyes flashed at the mention of the woman they were all told was a failure, yet they were all compared to. No one could live up to Romanova.

Ivan was silent for a moment. The tension built, 'Ivanova' wondering if she'd done something wrong. The single silent moment stretched, becoming minute after minute...

"Send out a team." He finally said.

"Yes, sir." she said. She remained standing respectfully in front of his desk, waiting...

"Dismissed."

Only then did she leave the office, glad she'd forgotten none of the etiquette required to stay alive when speaking to Ivan Petrovich. After all, she was the third sent into the room with that message... But the only one to come back out.

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Natasha and Clint laid, side by side, on a snowy rooftop. It was directly opposite the building they were watching. Nothing had moved for an hour-they were getting pretty frustrated.

Suddenly, Natasha stood. "I'm going to observe on the ground." Clint nodded, and Natasha began down the flight of stairs.

Her specialty was infiltration and interrogation; it was Clint who was better suited to these rooftop missions. That is, when the target was actually _doing_ something. This... This was staring at an empty building. That's a _traffic camera_'s specialty, not two highly trained assassins.

Soon, Natasha arrived on the ground. Clint watched from above, the eye in sky. Well, the Hawkeye in the sky. He watched carefully and wondered at her uneasy demeanor. Natasha could be very uncomfortable and you'd never be able to tell; she was that good of an actor. If you could see it, something was seriously wrong. He saw her hand flutter to her ear before he heard her soft, uneasy voice.

"Hawk, are there any eyes on me?" she said, specifically not looking in his direction as to not give away his location. Even with her suspicions, she surveyed the warehouse. Nothing.

"None but mine, Widow." replied Barton. He kept his eyes on her, knowing her instincts were rarely wrong.

"Someone else is watching me." She murmured, looking sharply in his direction. The flash of binoculars being put away was her reward. She looked nonchalantly away. "Hawk, the building's compromised. Get out of there." said Natasha, all of her instincts telling her this was really, really bad.

Before Clint could do anything, two girls with multiple weapons were behind him. He whipped around, his bow strung, and the one thing he took in before the ensuing battle was the Red Room insignia on their matching outfits.

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_**Review... It makes me choose which story to update first. ;)**_

_**-JoMiSm**_


	5. Chapter 5

**_I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever, but I'm going on vacation on the seventh, so I am trying to update five stories in eight days. Mission Impossible._**

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Clint didn't hesitate to fire at them. Natasha'd had something in her eyes that made Clint believe she wanted out. These girls didn't show the smallest bit of rebellion; they belonged to the Red Room, heart and soul.

They dove from his arrows, but they didn't expect the tricks. Clint just managed to net one of them, and the girl instantly began cutting her way through the thick net. Persistent. Clint quickly shot her with a tranquilizer arrow, not wanting to kill young girls. They were sixteen, maybe?

But in the split second Clint was looking at the girl he'd tranquilized, her angry partner put a knife to his throat, and Clint was caught. If he moved an inch, he would die, and he knew it. Just before the girl was about to kill him, Natasha burst in from the stairwell. Though her arrival may seem a little late, the entire ordeal happened in about sixteen seconds. That's a good time to run from the ground floor to the roof.

"I don't want to kill you. Let go of my partner." Natasha growled, leveling a gun at the girl's head.

The girl smirked at the gun and the hesitation. "_You've gone soft." _the girl quipped back in Russian. She stepped onto the ledge of the building, dragging Clint with her. "_Go ahead, kill me. But he goes with me." _Even if the girl was killed, Clint would fall backwards off the building with her.

Natasha's eyes flashed with an unreadable emotion. "Escape protocol alpha fourteen." Natasha muttered before cocking the gun.

"Для России." whispered the girl, looking straight into Natasha's eyes as she was shot. She fell backwards from the building, her grip loosening only in death.

Clint shot a grappling hook arrow quickly into the ledge he fell from, jerking to a stop as the girl kept falling. With little effort, he climbed back onto the roof.

"Natasha-" he started.

"Grab the other one, get to rendezvous." Natasha said, putting away her gun quickly, running on autopilot.

"Are you-"

"If you say 'okay,' this knife will end up in your skull." Natasha growled, a knife suddenly appearing in her hand. Normally, Clint would brush this off, but now... She was dead serious.

"Alright, alright... What about..."He trailed off. 'The other one' was left unsaid.

"I've got it." Natasha sighed, starting down the stairs without him. Clint sighed, looking after her, and briefly wondered what was going through her mind before he shouldered the unconscious girl.

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Natasha picked up the young girl gently, not that it would matter how she lifted her. She couldn't feel it anymore. Her mind was elsewhere as she strolled deeper into the barren, snowy landscape.

Twelve other girls that'd met the same fate, all by the same younger Natasha.

"Для России."

The words every Room trainee said every day of their life, and was trained to say at death. The words that haunted Natasha's nightmares, the voices of so many of her friends whispering them, betrayed.

"Для России. For Russia." The entire reason they were all murderers before they reached first grade, the reason Natasha had nightmares all the time, the entire thing was for Russia.

The reason this girl was going to be buried by the snow.

Natasha snapped back to reality and swiftly threw an explosive onto the ground, creating a small crater. Natasha laid the girl in the hole, turning and letting the snow cover her slowly. As she paused with her back turned to her, Natasha looked over her shoulder. "For Russia." whispered Natasha bitterly.

She walked away into the snow, locking down the memories threatening to overwhelm her.

* * *

Natasha appeared beside Clint and the young, tied up girl. "Taken care of." Natasha said briskly. Clint only nodded.

The plane landed five silent minutes later, and Clint carried the girl into the plane.

"Who's she? What's she doing here?" Coulson asked, annoyed at his lack of information.

"A Room trainee." Natasha said, crossing her arms in front of the now slightly sheepish looking Coulson. "Something you're not telling me, Coulson?"

Coulson sighed. "I'll tell you when we're back on the ground." With that, he retreated to the cockpit.

"Coward." Muttered Natasha, sitting down. Clint sat opposite her, and the Room trainee started to stir. "Oh, excellent timing." Natasha sighed.

The trainee looked up, looking straight at Natasha immediately. The girl took in her disheveled appearance, her weary aura, the way she was trying not to fall apart, all in an instant.

"You have gone soft." the girl said. Strange, considering she was unconscious when he partner said the same thing.

Natasha narrowed her eyes; she'd had enough.

"You are the one from your section chosen to go on to be the next Black Widow, yes?" Natasha said, looking the girl in the eyes with a darkness in her gaze.

"Da." the girl said Defiantly. "It was me or her." She knows what'd happened to her partner, somehow.

Natasha put on her poker face; this girl would not break her.

"Now all I have to do is pass the elimination, and I become you. " she continued.

Natasha's eyes narrow. "That is _not_ all there is to it. Do you even know what elimination is?"

Clint felt _really_ out of the loop.

The girl radiated defiance. "Yes. I have to kill one of my teammates."

Clint was shocked.

Natasha looked at the girl. Yes, that's definitely what they told her... Still lying to your trainees all these years later, Ivan? "That is not what elimination is." The girl began to speak, but Natasha cut her off. "What do you think the Room would do with all those who were unqualified?"

The girl was silent. She didn't know.

"No, you're led into a room, and told that if you talk, you will be Punished. They shove a gun into your hands, and the first person they shove into there with you is your closest friend. She looks into your eyes, believing you picked her and her alone to die, and as instructed, says only "Для России." And then you have to shoot your closest friend, and watch as she is dragged away with hardly as much care as a sack of potatoes.

The next girl, and the next, and the next are all shoved into the room, all believing you're the one that sealed their fate. Some will plead. Some will cry. Some will try to fight back. Some will ask you 'why?' And you shoot them all, one by one, The girls you've been with since you were young enough to remember. And only then are you _one step closer _to becoming me." Natasha said, unflinchingly. Twelve gunshots she'd forever regret rung out in her head, but she wouldn't show it on the outside.

"You're lying." the girl said, obviously frightened. They said the others would be safe...

"No. Petrovich is the liar." Natasha said, standing and walking to the cockpit with Coulson, avoiding Clint's searching gaze.

He had a feeling he knew what the nightmare was about.

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_**Nice, long chapter. Hope you enjoyed or cried or threw your computer out a window or laughed for no reason...**_

_**review and tell me which is most like you! **_

_**-JoMiSm**_


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